


drowning in a rainstorm

by muppetstiefel



Series: waiting's everything you know [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/M, Gay Will Byers, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mike Wheeler Being an Idiot, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Step-Siblings Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 10:00:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: "Whenever he tries to put words to the feeling, all he comes up with rain. Rain, pouring down constantly from overhead. A never-ending stream of water droplets that catch on his skin and make him shiver. All he remembers is a constant trickle of rain pooling at his feet. Working its way up, up, up. Ready to drown him."Will Byers can't remember a time he didn't feel like he was sinking.





	drowning in a rainstorm

Will Byers has always felt different.

Heavy. Soaked. Weighed down by the weight of his clothes that cling to his body.

Whenever he tries to put words to the feeling, all he comes up with rain. Rain, pouring down constantly from overhead. A never-ending stream of water droplets that catch on his skin and make him shiver.

He knows that, rationally, the rainstorm can’t have always been there. That it must have been sunny at some point, but he doesn’t really remember it.

All he remembers is a constant trickle of rain pooling at his feet. Working its way up, up, up. Ready to drown him.

Some days the rain seems heavier. Unstoppable pellets carving into his skin. Other days it’s barely misting, a light haze overhead. But it’s always there.

* * *

He’s six the first time he remembers the storm.

He’d dug up some old toys of his mom’s and sat on the front porch cradling a chipped doll that once belonged to her.

It was harmless. It was nothing.

The first rainstorm feels more like an avalanche of snow.

It’s his dad. He hurls words like Will has seen him hurl fists. They hurt just as much.

He’s crying. Crying as heavy as the thunderstorm him and Jonathan had got caught in the week before. But the words don’t stop. Will doesn’t know what they mean but they’re so venomous that they sting anyway.

He hiccups through a sob. Hides behind the legs of his mom. The words chase him even then.

There is fighting that night. Clumsy fists and missiles of words. He crawls into Jonathan’s bed and waits for the storm to stop. It doesn’t’. Not for a while.

The words follow him around, a heavy shadow anchored to his leg.

When Mike steals Nancy’s shoes and asks Will to play dress up, he can feel the storm encroaching so fast he can’t breathe. Mike doesn’t ask again.

He tries to shake the words, shake the storm clouds that gather overhead, but they don’t fade.

It isn’t until he sees the moving truck pulling out of the drive that the rain inside of him fades to a drizzle.

He doesn’t cry, though they all expect him to. His mom holds him and tells him, “it’s okay, you can cry Will. It’s okay to cry.”

But he doesn’t. he can’t. All he feels is relief, and the hint of sunlight on his face as the clouds part.

Jonathan cries, but only to himself, locked inside his room. Will hears him. Presses a hand to the wall. Wishes his brother could step into the sun.

And he does. They all do. The rain focuses all its attention on Will.

* * *

The words still follow him, but they’re lazy now and they lag behind. They’re spat from other students, or by his uncle at Christmas time, but they don’t burrow their way into his ribs in the same way they did from his dad.

There are other people to share his rain cloud now. Mike. Lucas. Dustin. They’re just as much an object of the heckles as Will is, and it helps not to handle it alone.

He marvels at the way they shoulder the storm. How they brush it off as though it never soaks them to the bone. Dustin always laughs so carefree. Mike can quip back with an insult as fast as light. Lucas seems to vibrate with happiness as soon as they leave the school building.

Will can never be that happy. Not when he’s always so cold.

He’s nine and a half when he realises he’s different. It hits him so suddenly it takes his breath away.

It’s summer. They’re wandering by the lake, as they always do when the days stretch out in front of them. Dustin is at the front. He says he’s navigating, but he’s really picking berries from a bush and launching them into the lake by their side. Lucas is trailing behind, stick making lines in the dirt as he drags it behind him.

It’s Mike. He’s by Will’s side, recounting a story of how Holly had hit her chin against the table when mastering her walking technique. He’s talking so animatedly, hands waving around his head and voice picking up with the velocity of the story. He needs a haircut. His shoes are stained brown. And he looks so beautiful in this light, Will realises numbly.

His stomach squirms at that. He feels nauseous. Yet he can’t stop thinking about Mike’s skin, and his eyes and the ways he glows in the light.

He leaves early and buries his head under his pillow. He can’t stop feeling it, no matter how hard he scrubs at his eyes, or how much he claws at his head.

It feels like sunshine. The rain clouds evaporate.

They’re not gone long. They’re walking by the video store. Will is watching Mike. That light is back again.

But so are the words, lodging themselves under his skin. They’re accompanied by fists this time, driven into his stomach, so hard he throws up afterwards.

The words tie to the way he looks at Mike. And they hurt, they sting his eyes and make Mike spit blood, so they must be avoided.

The rainclouds are back. Summer fades into storms, which fades into September. Will tries to forget how Mike snorts when he laughs. He tries not to choke on the rain, falling heavier than before.

* * *

The rain doesn’t let up, not for a while. Instead Will gets good at ignoring it.

Sometimes he wants to tell someone, anyone. Maybe then the storm will ease up. Maybe someone will hand him an umbrella.

But he can’t. Because what if the storm gets heavier and they leave him alone and shivering? They will. He knows they will. Because the words hurt people. He hurts people. And who wants to be around that?

So he doesn’t tell anyone and instead tries to breathe as the rain thunders around him.

November 6th comes. And then it goes.

The pain of it all is enough to make Will stop thinking about the rain. About Mike. About those words. He thinks about his moms broken smile, or the way Jonathan shakes when he’s making breakfast, or the nightmares instead.

It’s nice, in a morbid sort of way. His friends don’t mind when he’s quiet, when he zones out of conversations of can’t stop crying. Because that’s not him, right? That’s the Upside Down.

The Demogorgon haunts his nightmares the most. It’s face, cleaving in half and leaning tauntingly towards him. But then it’s Mike, screaming Those Words. Or his mom, with tears carved into her skin.

He wakes up hot and sweaty and so very cold.

Jonathan always holds him when he wakes up. Sometimes he cries there, alongside Will. Sometimes he sings softly under his breath. Very rarely they talk of the nightmares.

Will wants to tell him because he wants the rain to stop. But he doesn’t, because if Jonathan knows that Will is faulty he might stop holding him in the middle of the night.

Will’s not sure if he can hold himself together on his own.

* * *

He spends the whole year feeling cold. And it’s not just him. There’s two sharing his skin, two who live in the cold and the shadows.

After he’s gone, after everything inside Will has burnt up, Joyce holds him. Strokes his hair.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she murmurs, voice cracking on each words. It makes Will wince.

He just shrugs, sweat sheening on his body. Grabs onto her arm. “Guess I’m just always cold.”

If she pushes, he’ll crack. He’s too tired to hold up a defence. He’ll tell her about the rainstorm, and Mike and the baby doll on the porch.

But she doesn’t push. So he doesn’t tell.

As quickly as the visitor comes, he goes. Will gets used to feeling cold on his own. Then, he gets used to the rain fading to spit.

He gets used to losing Mike, even if the thought of that lodges itself between his ribcage. But it’s good, he thinks, because Eleven is kind and strong and fits him just right. Everything Will isn’t.

They get Max in exchange. She’s scary, but she’s also funny and fierce. If Will loved girls, he thinks he’d love someone like Max.

The absence of Mike draws him closer to Lucas. If anyone is sunshine personified, it’s Lucas. He radiates happiness, vibrates with it. Will feels warmer just standing next to him.

And yet he can’t move for the abuse that’s hurled at him. It’s different to Will’s. Just as vicious, but somehow more open and unavoidable.

Lucas smiles through all of it. Shrugs it off with no bruises and Max to hold his hand.

Max is even stronger than that. Putting up with Billy and Neil deserves an award on its own. She’s always able to tilt her chin towards the sun and stand tall.

Sometimes Will catches her eyes lingering on girls. She never says anything when Will sees her, just lets the knowledge sit in the air. It’s enough to make Will stop holding his breath.

Will wishes he was as strong as Lucas. As fearless as Max.

But he’s not.

* * *

The day it happens, there’s rain. Actual tangible rain pelting the roof of Mike’s garage and swimming on the sidewalk.

Mike’s words ooze venom. They hurt more than his dad’s ever did.

“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.”

Will wishes he was paper. Paper that would just crumple at the slight hint of rain. Instead he seems to be a sponge, soaking all the hurt up.

Mike looks surprised by himself, but he doesn’t make a move to snatch the words back from the air. Instead he lets them sit, out there in the open.

Will breathes through it. Embraces the rain and walks straight into it.

The rain clouds follow him out of Hawkins. Like an overly loyal dog that sinks its teeth into its owner’s flesh.

It feels like hail. Driving its way into his skin. An unwanted visitor among his cluttered thoughts.

There’s another unwanted visitor.

El, the girl in the bed in the corner of the room.

El, the girl who reeks of Mike and all that’s wrong with Will.

El, who cries herself to sleep as though she’s being rained on too.

It’s not that Will doesn’t like her. He does. She’s sharp, quick with wit. She’s kind to his mom and sometimes she’s so small that Will feels some urge of protectiveness over her.

It’s rather that he doesn’t know her. And she seems to know him all too well.

They’re trudging home from visiting mom at work one day when she casts her eyes over to him.

“It’s… raining?” she asks, unsure of herself.

Will just nods, despite the fact that the ground is dry and hot.

But it is a bad day and Will’s brain seems to be melting, so she’s right. It is raining.

He looks to her, hands swinging slightly at their sides, but he feels nothing.

Will Byers, who feels everything.

He remembers Joyce in the weeks after Bob’s death. Her brain had been screaming. It was easy to see but Will could feel it, seeping out of her body.

He remembers Mike introducing him to El. The way his brain had screamed with joy, so much that Will felt dizzy.

He remembers the anger of Lucas and Dustin’s first fight as though it was his own. How the anger had made him ache.

And yet, when he looks at El he feels nothing but static and numbness.

She can feel him though. The rain that pours through his brain only gets louder in his ears. Its brushing his chin by now. Drowning is inevitable.

He grows closer to El. Gets used to the feeling of her hand in his. Feels empty without her by his side.

He still doesn’t say anything.

* * *

He’s eighteen before he actually says it.

High school comes and goes without any sign of easing up. He never stops holding his breath. The water by now is covering his face, inching its way closer to his mouth with every new lap. One tidal wave and he’ll be completely submerged.

Sometimes he swears some is already in his lungs. Every time someone hurls the word ‘queer’ at him. Every time his mom looks at him like something is just a little bit off. The gaps between speech when he’s on the phone with Mike.

The rain will ease up. That’s what Hopper had told him years ago, when he had shivered in the midst of a storm. The rain will ease up kid. You’ll see clearly again.

But for years the rain has just been getting heavier and heavier. He doesn’t know how to stop it.

He’s eighteen and finished with high school, yet he’s still drowning under all of it.

Nancy picks him up. They’re driving to New York, making the trek to see Jonathan.

She presses the horn when she sees him. He smiles whilst submerging.

For two people whose lives are so intrinsically intertwined, Will can count on his hand the number of times he’s talked to Nancy. Yet she still lets him choose the music and asks him about school and doesn’t press when he only answers her in affirmatives.

She talks of Mike. Normally that would help Will to breathe. Now it feels like she’s pouring water down his back.

They drive in steady silence. Sometimes, Nancy throws questions his way. They feel sharp and dig into his skin.

“Are you excited to see your brother?”

“Where are you going for college?”

And now he’s fully submerged. Water surrounding him. There’s no coming back for this.

“How’s Joyce?”

He can still hear her. He can still hear her underwater. How is that possible?

“Will?”

“Will.”

He’s breathing still. Just barely.

“Will, are you okay?”

It’s like light, shimmering above the surface. Enticing. Further than it looks.

She pulls the car into the side of the road, cursing softly as she pulls as her seatbelt.

“Will?”

Her face is carved with concern. She doesn’t move though, so he doesn’t either.

He doesn’t plan to say it. Doesn’t think.

He’s either going to drown or swim. He doesn’t care which one. He just wants something to finally happen.

So he coughs through his water-filled lungs and wheezes the sentence.

“I like boys.”

Nancy doesn’t move. The water doesn’t ripple. Everything is still.

Will is fine with this, he realises. He can cope with sinking. He can cope with sinking if it will all just be over.

Her mouth is moving but Will can’t hear anything. There’s too much water in his ears.

She says something again. Fixes her eyes on his. Tries to break through the water which is quickly freezing to ice.

Then there are arms. Strong and sturdy hands, wrapping underneath him and pulling him out from the water.

Nancy is hugging him. Holding him tight against her shoulder.

He splutters. Water coats her shoulder. She doesn’t move.

He takes a breath. It’s deep, and it hurts, but he can breathe.

All he can do is laugh, soaked and shivering, in the passenger seat of his best friends’ sister’s car, with her arms wrapped tight around him.

He feels like a shipwreck survivor. Damaged. Broken. But Alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's all just ignore the fact that this was a major vent piece, shall we?
> 
> A few things:  
> \- I wrote this with the very clear intention of having Will's powers be more obvious but I couldn't fit it in without it seeming clunky. So it's more ambigious and mainly in the subtext. In my head Will is an empath, so he can feel other people's emotions and even manipulate them (not that he's ever knowingly done that).   
> \- There's been lots of dicussion on who Will would come out to first and I'm a strong believer that it would be someone he knows but not well, hence Nancy in this fic.
> 
> Thank You for reading!! This is part of a series, and the other fic is much less rambly and much longer!! Please go check it out!!


End file.
